From jail to treatment: Helping get the mentally ill on track

In San Diego County, help for mentally ill offenders can come from several sources — including the county and the courts — but demand is high, resources are limited and people, especially those living on the street, can fall through the cracks. Last month, the county Board of Supervisors approved a three-year spending plan for new and existing programs, some of which focus specifically on people with serious mental illness who are also in the criminal justice system. The funding — nearly $570 million over the next three years — comes from the Mental Health Services Act, passed by California voters in 2004, which imposes a 1 percent tax on millionaires’ income. (The county also receives money for mental health programs from other local, state and federal sources.) READ ABOUT IT HERE

Recent research indicates that individuals who are released back into the community post-incarceration are roughly eight times more likely to die of an overdose in the first two weeks post-release compared to other times. The risk of overdose is elevated during this period due to reduced physiological tolerance for opioids among the incarcerated population, a lack of effective addiction treatment options while incarcerated and poor care transitions back into the community. Allowing states to restart Medicaid benefits prior to release will dovetail with innovative reentry programs already being implemented in communities across the country and would give individuals reentering society a fighting chance to live a healthier, drug-free life.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) introduced H.R. 4005, the Medicaid Reentry Act, a bill that would provide states with the flexibility to restart Medicaid coverage for eligible incarcerated individuals up to 30 days prior to their release.

Delaware currently has the best policy for the treatment of transgender people in prison.

Most states’ policies are sparse, and convey a clear discomfort with and ignorance about the trans community. We have, however, identified one state’s policy as representing current best practices in the field: the Delaware Department of Corrections policy. This two–part policy, revised in 2016 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, sets an informed and comprehensive standard.

In this post we review the scope of the gaps and inadequacies in states’ transgender incarceration policies, hold up suggestions from Delaware and other leaders in the field as partial solutions, and make recommendations for further research that is desperately needed in this area...."

Multiple leaders across the nation, including Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and even President Donald Trump, have declared states of emergency in response to the opioid epidemic. Policymakers claim to be battling this public health crisis on all fronts, but one arena continues to be conspicuously ignored: our prisons and jails.

"This is not a problem of resources. Many incarcerated patients currently receive appropriate care for other chronic conditions, including diabetes, HIV, cancer and even more-newly-recognized disorders, like gender dysphoria. Our federal and state corrections systems have the capacity to offer this treatment — a treatment defined as “essential medicine” by the World Health Organization. Anne Arundel's Road to Recovery program and other correctional facility programs (Rikers jail in New York, the prison system of Rhode Island and Vermont) demonstrate that success with medication-assisted therapy is possible."

A staggering number of women who are incarcerated are not even convicted: more than a quarter of women who are behind bars have not yet had a trial. Moreover, 60% of women in jail have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial.

Pratap Narayan, MD, a forensic psychiatrist with extensive experience in the criminal justice system joins Lorry in this episode to talk about dealing with psychopathic patients. He currently lives and works in California. Originally from India, Dr. Narayan migrated to the US early in his career and completed fellowships in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychiatric Research. […]